The Book of Life – Deborah Harkness
This is the third (and I believe) final installation of this series. I have read the first two (see here and here). I would describe them as a more sophisticated twilight – there are witches, daemons and vampires, a council that wants to keep them all separate and a mysterious Book of Life, which is each ‘species’ claims as a holy book.
Here is the blurb …
After traveling through time in Shadow of Night, the second book in Deborah Harkness’s enchanting series, historian and witch Diana Bishop and vampire scientist Matthew Clairmont return to the present to face new crises and old enemies. At Matthew’s ancestral home at Sept-Tours, they reunite with the cast of characters fromA Discovery of Witches–with one significant exception. But the real threat to their future has yet to be revealed, and when it is, the search for Ashmole 782 and its missing pages takes on even more urgency. In the trilogy’s final volume, Harkness deepens her themes of power and passion, family and caring, past deeds and their present consequences. In ancestral homes and university laboratories, using ancient knowledge and modern science, from the hills of the Auvergne to the palaces of Venice and beyond, the couple at last learn what the witches discovered so many centuries ago.
I found this one to be a bit long-winded. I would have preferred a shorter, but faster paced story. Having said that, I did read it in a matter of days – it is a compelling story.
More reviews …
http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/books/article1975975.html